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Watch, Watched, Watching: Festival Time!


Zorral

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45 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

The accident was during the rehearsal, then they decided to include it in the final shot.

I mean, I don't doubt this actually happened in rehearsals.  What I'm incredulous about is the notion that the inception of the scene came from this accident.  That sounds to me like classic embellishing.

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3 minutes ago, DMC said:

I mean, I don't doubt this actually happened in rehearsals.  What I'm incredulous about is the notion that the inception of the scene came from this accident.  That sounds to me like classic embellishing.

I think they're making it look more than what it is.

It seems to me that the plan was always for Daemon to step up to help his brother the rest of the way, which is the big gesture (for me anyways). But during rehearsal, crown fell, Smith decided to pick it up while he was there, and they decided to incorporate that into the final scene, which makes for a nicer and longer moment than him just offering him some help up to the seat.

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House of the Dragon and Andor have helped me regain my confidence that it is actually possible to make good fantasy or sci fi tv these days without totally bollocksing it all up. You'd hope that others will make fact finding missions to learn how these shows have managed to have been made without feeling like some by-the-numbers streaming service filler like.. well I won't name names but we all know who I mean.

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Funny you mentioned Andor. I went on Mouse+ last night to finally start it and the site suggested....Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Since I mentioned it in the RIP thread I figured I had to watch it. Still holds up really well and lowkey it's a good war movie for kids.

Also, the people who made it had to be dropping acid on the reg. It was the early 70s after all...

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7 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Love Murder she Wrote, but Mary Poppins is just better than B&B. Sorry.

Can't lie, I've always thought MP was lame as hell. Andrews is the better singer and actor between the leads of the two films, but that's where MP's advantages begin and end for me. The movie is so corny.

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10 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Can't lie, I've always thought MP was lame as hell. Andrews is the better singer and actor between the leads of the two films, but that's where MP's advantages begin and end for me. The movie is so corny.

She is also one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. And is so well spoken she makes the queen seem like a market trader. 

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33 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

We tried the pilot of Pennyworth and it was better than I expected for a DC Comics offshoot.  Is it worth sticking with it?

Yes, indeed. I love everything about this show. Enormous fun.

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The Fantasy Prequel Problem


https://www.vulture.com/article/fantasy-prequel-problem-tv-house-of-the-dragon-rings-of-power.html#_ga=2.71533783.594300443.1665673832-1748284771.1665673831

Quote

 

Fantasy television in the fall of 2022 looks like an A/B test. Two options have been set before us, both appearing weekly through September and October: HBO’s Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon, option A, offers a brawny, bloody extension of a familiar fantasy universe, one where brutal interpersonal violence and petty power struggles are occasionally interrupted by shrieking dragons and the threat of large-scale catastrophe. The Rings of Power, option B, is positively heartwarming by comparison. There’s still violence and evil, but its magical landscape is peopled with do-gooders. Characters in Middle-earth can be friends; any friendship in King’s Landing, conversely, is just a betrayal that hasn’t happened yet. Middle-earth believes in redemption. Westeros believes in a Sisyphean embrace of struggle until death. Grim or grandiose. Cynical or corny. You can watch both, of course, but it’s hard to shake the flick-of-a-light-switch sensation in moving from one to the other.

But underneath all that Luigi-Waluigi folderol, it’s striking how alike the two projects are. Both are born of the same franchising drive: Extend, expand, capitalize on, and continue. Both land on similar solutions to find their central premises: Faced with the question of how to keep going after a blockbuster story reaches a definitive end, they cast backward. If you can’t keep explaining what happens next, your best option is to rewind and explain what happened before — never mind that you’re inevitably boxed in by the existence of the original thing, and never mind that “how Galadriel became Galadriel” is perhaps fascinating ground for Galadriel to explore in therapy but far more difficult to make into a surprising story. (Difficult but not impossible. We live in the age of Cruella but also Better Call Saul.)

It’s not just that they’re both prequels, though. Like the dubious Fantastic Beasts movies before them, they are essentially encyclopedia entries turned into television series. House of the Dragon stems from a particular chunk of George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, a history textbook written from within the Song of Ice and Fire universe told from the point of view of a Westerosi academic trying to organize various primary documents. The Rings of Power comes from an appendix to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Return of the King, which also exists via an in-text explanation that was collected as part of a fictional archive. It’s even more sparse than Martin’s textbook — much of the Tolkien appendix is a bulleted timeline of events covering several millennia. “C. 500 Sauron begins to stir again in Middle-earth,” reads one. “750 Eregion founded by the Noldor,” notes another.

For House of the Dragon, that history textbook — and the pressure of the original series only a few generations away — forms a short leash, generating a cramped story full of incestuous familial dramas and battle lines that crisscross the same territory over and over. At the same time, the show is perpetually hurrying to get to some future good part, hop-skipping across several years of story at once. There is no time to dawdle on character development or the immediate consequences of major events. Everything important has to be crammed into one funeral scene or one argument between enemies. The show feels constrained but also stretched too thin.

The Rings of Power operates almost in the opposite direction: It’s bounded by a nutshell and yet feels like the king of infinite space. At its best, Tolkien’s terse timeline entries serve as keyholes, and Rings of Power creates the sensation of glimpsing through them to discover entire little worlds on the other side of the door. But the series is so enamored with Tolkien trivia and centuries of myth, it’s missing a fundamental sense of urgency. It feels like an open-world video game, perpetually inviting the player to hare off after side quests rather than buckle down on the main story line. Except an open-world game would be better at providing closure for the side quests; there’s no closure for all the bits and bobs in Rings of Power — just more evil, still looming on the horizon.

Together, the two series give the impression that TV fantasy is a gold rush, a boomtown — two huge adaptations appearing at the same time, each of them attracting millions of eyeballs and muscular, unignorable marketing campaigns. They join a growing pile of titles with similar scope and magical inclinations (although none quite as big): Wheel of Time, The Witcher, His Dark Materials, Shadow & Bone, Outlander, The Sandman, See. I’m tempted to throw in Westworld, but I can hear Roman from Party Down chiding me about hard sci-fi. Nevertheless, on TV, this is where a lot of the big bets and big money are happening!

And yet even in the moments when a show like The Rings of Power does feel fun, the genre as a whole is starting to feel like magic, magic everywhere but nary an intoxicating drop to drink. House of the Dragon is such a rote extension of Game of Thrones that it almost seems silly to call it by a different title. (Whoever made the decision about its opening credits theme apparently came to the same conclusion.) Its Targaryens have nominally better blonde wigs. Technically there may be fewer instances of sexual violence, but now there are multiple graphic, torturous birth scenes. House of the Dragon is, at its core, more Game of Thrones — just as Rings of Power, in its visual style, tonal palette, and (beautiful, tender) score, is deliberately operating from the Peter Jackson playbook. Both series are presented as shining new jewels in the streaming pantheon, and they are! Nearing the end of their first seasons, though, it’s painfully clear that they are conservative plays, efforts to make and remake things that were already successful and serve them to audiences again, like last night’s roast chicken turned into today’s chicken salad. ....

 

More, after these paras.

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12 hours ago, Zorral said:

Can't say that I agree with a lot of that. IMO, and only my opinion, HOTD has spent 8 episodes doing character development. They gave us the back story for why the coming war happens, why certain people act how they do etc. Maybe I am just too simplistic of a viewer.

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I'm still trying to rewatch movies instead of shows.

-The Wolf of Wall Street - I love Jonah Hill's character in this movie. "well...I wasn't going to let someone else fuck my cousin."  Like he's just such a weirdo and then there's that one quick "you know Rudy" thing that explains what his deal is without making a huge deal about it. He finally makes sense if you view him as basically in love with the main guy and attracted to Bernthal's character.

-The Last King of Scotland - God I love Forrest Whittaker. I don't blame myself for rarely finishing this one. It starts out as a fun fish out water buddy story and uuh yeah. 

-There Will Be Blood - still fucking phenomenal. I remember watching this movie and thinking "I have to give Anderson another chance" I still dislike Alien vs Predator and Magnolia but damn did he hit it out of the park with this one. The huge time skip at  the end should blunt the impact of the last two scenes but Lewis is just so good at conveying that "grandpa towards the end" energy. 

-Cloverfield/The Cloverfield Paradox/10 Cloverfield lane - What a nonsense franchise. Quality aside, the connections just don't work. The Aliens in 10 Cloverfield Lane aren't the monsters from Cloverfield. The Cloverfield Paradox seems to be intended as an origin movie, but it's energy crisis world does not match that of Cloverfield. 10 Cloverfield Lane is worth watching, but they did it no favors lumping it in with the Cloverfield "brand" 

-Candyman (2021) - I wish I'd watched the original first. Thought it was a reboot but no. Felt like a rough draft of a great horror movie. The parts that worked worked really well. I did take mild offense to "Joy Division girl" whose thing was to wear and Unknown Pleasures shirt and then respond to her boyfriends lines with the titles of Joy Division songs. They have him yell something like "we get it, you like joy division" but that just makes the gag worse. 

Life - After I finished The Cloverfield Paradox I was like "huh I don't remember this movie being this bad" but I was thinking of LIFE the movie where they find a little microbe named Calvin on mars. Much better! not great but given the limitations of the setting I approve. I like how it seemingly was non-violent until that seal breaks and it almost dies. 

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1 hour ago, RumHam said:

-There Will Be Blood - still fucking phenomenal. I remember watching this movie and thinking "I have to give Anderson another chance" I still dislike Alien vs Predator and Magnolia but damn did he hit it out of the park with this one. The huge time skip at  the end should blunt the impact of the last two scenes but Lewis is just so good at conveying that "grandpa towards the end" energy. 

AVP is Paul W.S. Anderson, not Paul Thomas Anderson. 

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12 hours ago, dbunting said:

HOTD has spent 8 episodes doing character development.

I saw it differently.  Particularly as they are ret-conning, or attempting to ret-con, the prince that was promised, which as far as I understand from those who have read the f7b stuff, isn't even in it, for the Jon Snow series.  Making an even bigger mess.

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One Way The Rings of Power Outdoes the Lord of the Rings Movies
Imagine how cringe “I am no man” would read today.

https://slate.com/culture/2022/10/rings-of-power-lord-of-the-rings-female-characters.html

Concluding paragraph:

Quote

.... It’s the smaller touches in The Rings of Power that make all the difference. For example, the Southlanders designate their makeshift keep for “wounded and children,” not “women and children.” There are no all-male armies—except, perhaps, for the Orcs. It may seem like nothing, but when watching Eowyn stand alone in The Two Towers or tuning into other fantasy shows that have unrealistic magical creatures as well as painfully realistic medieval sexism that remembers women exist only to torture them, you start to wonder whose fantasy it is. The Rings of Power stands out because it is a true escape no matter who’s watching, even if we know a certain someone is lurking in the shadows, waiting to rule them all.

 

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I'm nursing a soft tissue shoulder injury that permitted precisely zero sleep last night, so I crushed the first three episodes of Interview with the Vampire on AMC+ and damn, very impressed. Particularly like the changes to Louis backstory [Grey Worm has range, whaaaaa] and the actor playing Lestat won me over quick like. 

---

Still loving The Good Fight.  

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